ANNA Goldshmidt wanted a wedding that would leave people talking. Boy, did she get her wish.

On June 13, 2015, she and her groom, Elan Stratiyevsky, were to be the stars of an extravagant ceremony and reception at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, with 350 guests in attendance. Then a gun, carried by a cousin of the groom, accidentally went off, injuring at least four people.

Up until the wedding day, things had been running with military precision. The Bloomingdale’s registry — including a $US440 ($622) Nespresso coffee maker and a $US495 ($700) Waterford vase — was largely fulfilled. The nuptial hashtag #goldstrattwedding was established. And guests from Israel and Moscow had safely arrived.

The couple had rented out the entire 35th floor of the Waldorf, complete with private security. They would spend their wedding night in the 208sq metre suite where every president since Herbert Hoover has stayed.

The night before the June 13 wedding, Ms Goldshmidt and her seven bridesmaids decamped for the Waldorf. Of sleeping on the luxe Anichini sheets, she says, “It was very magical. Everything I dreamt of.”

Maya Rafailovich after being grazed in the head by a bullet.Source:New York Post

The next morning, she happily sipped bubbly as her hair and makeup team worked their magic. Ignoring superstitions about the groom not seeing the bride before the wedding, the couple trotted off to Central Park for a photo session.

“She looked like a princess. You couldn’t wipe the smile off my face,” Mr Stratiyevsky recalls. “People were taking pictures of us like we were celebrities. We felt like a million bucks.”

The bride slipped up to her suite at 6:30pm, a half-hour before guests were to descend upon the Waldorf’s Vanderbilt Room for cocktails. “I was making my way around the room greeting people,” Mr Stratiyevsky says. He remembers seeing his second cousin, liquor-store owner Vladimir Gotlibovsky, arrive.

The 9mm Ruger discharged by Gotlibovsky.Source:New York Post

About 100 guests were mingling when there was a startling bang.

“It sounded like a chandelier fell,” Mr Stratiyevsky recalls. “The last thing I thought was a gunshot. Who thinks ‘gunshot’ at the Waldorf at a black-tie wedding?”

It took a few seconds before Mr Stratiyevsky saw the first injury. “The lady started screaming that she’s bleeding, and her husband started screaming, ‘Help my wife, get an ambulance.’ And then there was panic.”

Maya Rafailovich, who works in the medical-staffing office of the bride’s parents, was grazed by the ricocheting bullet on the side of the head.

“There were whispers,” the groom says. “Some people said the chandelier fell, some people said it sounded like a gunshot. No one knew for sure, at that point, what happened.”

Indeed, Gotlibovsky had discharged his 9mm Ruger into the crowd. Sources have previously said that another guest may have bumped into Gotlibovsky, triggering a single shot from the gun that was in his pants pocket. His lawyer says surveillance video shows Gotlibovsky didn’t have his hand in his pocket, and that it was an accident.

Felix and Vladimir Gotilbovsky. Picture: John M. Mantel.Source:New York Post

As the bullet ricocheted around the room, three people were injured, and Ms Goldshmidt’s mother was grazed on the foot by debris.

Within minutes, ambulances respond to the scene, and Mr Stratiyevsky was whisked upstairs so he and Ms Goldshmidt could sign their ketubah (the Jewish wedding contact). Before he got there, the bride’s father pulled him aside with a firm directive: Don’t tell Anna anything.

“He said, ‘She can read you like a book — you have to hold it together,’ ” Mr Stratiyevsky remembers.

Ms Goldshmidt remembers noticing hotel employees yelling into walkie-talkies, and that her friends who served as witnesses for the ketubah signing were “kind of whispering among themselves and looked really pale,” but she didn’t dwell on it. “Everything felt perfect,” she says.

The sergeant broke the news that guests would be quarantined in the Empire Room, where the ceremony had been held​. ​

“All the guests are just pushing through these doors. You can’t keep 350 people in one room — not my guests!” Ms Goldshmidt recalls. “Everyone’s saying, ‘I’m a lawyer!’ ”

Then the wedding planner told the bride — who had spent a year fashioning this million-dollar ­affair — “I’m sorry, [the reception’s] cancelled.”

Gotlibovsky, with a bullet hole clearly visible in his pants, is transported by police on June 13, 2015. Picture: Christopher Sadowski.Source:New York Post

As she remembers it: “I’m looking at [the planner], and I’m screaming, ‘What’s going on?’ He’s looking at me, he’s shaking his head. I lost it. I was hysterical. I couldn’t believe it was happening and I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. You don’t see things like this in movies.”

Up until this point, Ms Goldshmidt still thought a light bulb had fallen from a chandelier.

Finally, an officer​ ​explain​ed​ explained there was a shooting at her wedding — and that it was committed by one of her guests.

“I asked Elan who it was, and he refused to tell me. I turned to my mum” — not realising she had been grazed — “and grabbed her and said, ‘Tell me who it was!’ ”

Finding out that it was her new husband’s relative left her ­“extremely upset and distraught”.

“It felt worse than if someone would have died in [my] family. It was a tragedy,” she adds. “I don’t even remember myself screaming, but everyone says it was bloodcurdling.”

By this point, the police had apprehended Gotlibovsky. But the gun was nowhere to be found. The Post previously reported how, according to authorities, the shooter — who a source said was drunk (his lawyer denies he was drinking) — allegedly slipped the Ruger to his brother, Felix, who turned it over to their mother. The mum gave it to Gotlibovsky’s wife, who left and locked it in the family safe.

The bride, Anna Goldshmidt.Source:Twitter

Gotlibovsky has since been charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree, tampering with physical evidence and six counts of assault in the third degree. His lawyer reports that the gun was turned over to police the night of the wedding.

Mr Stratiyevsky claims that police didn’t have a problem with the ­reception happening, but told him that the decision was up to Waldorf management.

“Somebody [at the hotel] panicked,” plaintiff’s lawyer David Jaroslawicz says. “Once they told the guests to go home, there was no other recourse.” (A spokesman for the Waldorf Astoria declined to comment, since litigation is pending.)

Meanwhile, a feast fit for a tsar was going to ruin in the ballroom. A private caterer had been hired to work with the Waldorf staff to create a custom menu.

“Obviously the traditional Russian black-caviar station at the smorgasbord, all sorts of different finger foods — it was lavish,” says Mr Stratiyevsky, detailing the raw bar with lobster and shrimp and crab legs, as well as the meat-carving station, never to be touched.

There was also to be a performance by Russian pop star Kristina Orbakaite, whom the couple had flown to New York and put up at the Waldorf. But even if the party had gone on, she was too scared to leave her room.

Anna Goldshmidt on her wedding day.Source:Twitter

“She’s the daughter of the ­Beyoncé of Russia,” Ms Goldshmidt says. “She was like, ‘This is Russian mafia or something. I don’t understand what kind of wedding I came to.’ ”

Eventually, the couple returned to the Presidential Suite — ironically equipped with bulletproof windows. The dutiful bridal party tried to get them to hit a club in a last-ditch effort to salvage the night. “They said, ‘We don’t care if you’re going in a tank top and shorts!’ They said, ‘We’ll close down any club — let’s go! We’re not going to stop this party!’ ” Ms Goldshmidt says. “We have the best friends.”

She did indeed slip into a tank top and shorts, but ended up having her first dance with her father in the middle of the hotel room, with the whole family crying.

The bride and groom never had their dance, though.

There was a half-hearted lifting of the bride on a chair by the gathered guests, but no one took any photos to document the ­moment.

And when they called down to claim the food from their reception, they were told, “Sorry, it’s already in the garbage.”

Once everyone cleared out, the couple considered staying overnight in their honeymoon suite, but Ms Goldshmidt felt too defeated. At 4am, she got an Uber car to shuttle her and her new husband home to Brighton Beach.

On the way out of the Waldorf, she took one last glance into the Empire Room, only to see her hand-built chuppah being broken down by hotel workers.

“I’m still traumatised,” Ms Gold­shmidt says. “This will affect me for the rest of my life, and my children.” She is now nearly six months’ pregnant with the couple’s first child.

The newlyweds say neither Gotlibovsky nor anyone in his immediate family have reached out to them — to apologise or otherwise.

Arthur Gershfeld, Gotlibovsky’s lawyer, says it’s not that his client doesn’t want to speak to the couple, but “they should not have contact with one another except through counsel. There’s no question that he feels bad”.

Mr Gershfeld adds: “It seems like the bride and groom are living their lives and doing just fine. If she were so emotionally disturbed, she’d have a problem getting pregnant.”

Ms Goldshmidt says those feelings aren’t going away anytime soon. “I was depressed for the first five months. The only pictures I have are from the park. We’ll never have a wedding video. This is as bad as it gets.”

This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission.

Five Movies Where the Waldorf Astoria Is a Star1:58

New York's Waldorf Astoria hotel has been a home away from home to presidents and movie stars, but the landmark is also known for it's prominent roles is popular movies. Photo: Waldorf Astoria